How Not to Pay $290 a Day for a Rental Car

Need to make changes to your rental car reservation? Make sure you read the agreement. Actually, read it no matter what, or you could end up paying a lot more than you bargained for.

Q: My wife and I rented a car at London Heathrow and discovered that we were overcharged (gouged?). We visit Britain nearly every year and usually rent from Alamo, as we've had good experiences with the company. We made reservations for a car at the Birmingham Airport. Due to scheduling problems, we did not make the flight to Birmingham and were flown to London instead.
At the Alamo office at Heathrow, I asked the agents if they could honor our reservation, with a drop off in Birmingham. They agreed to do so, but only had one car with an automatic transmission, a Volkswagen Scirocco. It's much smaller than we usually prefer, but we simply wanted to get on the road and complete our journey. The agent quoted a price of an additional £100 per week. Unfortunately, due to the small font on the rental agreement, I did not read it carefully.
And we were actually charged an additional £100 per day. The original reservation for ten days was quoted at £298 (approximately $506 at the time). The final tally we paid for the Scirocco was £1706 (approximately $2895). Had the rental agent made the cost clear to me, I would have looked for a car at another agency.
Is there anything you can do to get the company to lower the cost of the rental? – Larry E., Peoria, AZ

A: On the surface, I can’t offer much assistance with this case. The rental agreement is clear and Larry signed it, thereby agreeing to the charges. Still, the amount appears exorbitant. Because of that, I wanted to find out why the charge was so high. Europcar, which held the Master License Agreement to operate Alamo and National in the UK, investigated the claim and responded to Larry’s concerns. The crux of their response was:

“Based on the documentation available, I can confirm that the upgrade charge has been correctly applied and no refund is due.”

What we still don’t know is why they charged so much for the Scirocco, but we can make a guess. The car rental industry actively applies supply and demand to its reservations, sometimes aggressively. The fact that the location at Heathrow only had one car with an automatic transmission available, which Larry would return at another location, may have been the pivotal reason for why the cost was so high.

When I attempted to get an answer, Enterprise Holdings, which owns National and Alamo, had reacquired the brands in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, which meant there was nowhere to go. Enterprise was not involved at the time of the rental and Europcar is no longer involved, so neither company has an incentive to investigate. On the positive side of this development, we have found Enterprise to be more responsive than Europcar, so future claims may be easier to resolve.

There is also another positive development with rental cars in Europe. In July, the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK released information that an agreement was reached, facilitated by the European Commission, with six major car rental companies operating in the EU. It claims there will be greater transparency and improved customer practices, including:

• Improved transparency when making a website booking or reservation: consumers will now have more of the key information they need to shop around for the best deal for them.
• Better information at the booking stage about optional waiver and insurance products.
• More upfront information about pre- and post-rental vehicle inspection processes.
• Improved notification of, and dispute processes for, any charges for damage.

That might bode well for the future, but what about now? Even if I had been able to get to the right person at the right time, with Larry’s case, it’s unlikely anything would have come of it. Once you sign a rental agreement, no matter how exorbitant the charges may be, you become responsible for them. That is, of course, unless you can prove that the document was changed after you signed it, or that the agent deliberately misled you. In this case, Larry admitted to not reading the agreement carefully. Given the circumstances, I understand why he didn’t, but let it be a lesson: Before you sign a document, always make sure you know what it says.

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